Chapter Eight

The signs that lined the main drag of the state highway as it cut across town were fluorescent, not neon. Neon was too cool for a place like this. The endless strip malls with their stacked placards advertising chain restaurants, drug stores, hair salons could have been anywhere or nowhere. It sure felt like nowhere to Alice as she stomped back and forth beneath one of the columns of lit signs. 

She had a sign of her own. Star Touched, in Magic Marker on posterboard—both purchased less than an hour earlier from the strip mall Rite Aid. The sign sucked. Her lettering was terrible. Everything sucked. Everything was terrible.

Cars went by. She wished she had her wig. 

For the second time since she had started this stupid exercise, Alice leaned her posterboard against the column, slouched at the concrete base of one of its feet, and pulled out her cigarettes. They rattled in the box as she drew them out of her pocket. Only three left.

“Hey, Alice!”

Absorbed in her misery, Alice hadn’t noticed the familiar, beat-to-hell Toyota hatchback turn into the parking lot. A pretty girl, the same age as she was, with too much eyeshadow and a clumsy, asymmetrical haircut was yelling at her through the driver’s side window. Alice smiled, wearily.

“Hey, Michelle. Smoke?” She rattled the near empty pack toward the hatchback.

Michelle switched off the car and got out, trying to look like she didn’t care that she was blocking half the ramp to the parking lot. Alice liked that about Michelle. She loved to inconvenience the type of dorks who would shop here. 

Mud squelched beneath Michelle’s army boots and dirtied the hem of her Salvation Army black dress as she slogged through the grass to Alice’s offered cigarette. She took it without a word. Lit it and inhaled deeply. Alice stared at the screwdriver in her other hand.

“When are you going to get that thing fixed, anyway?”

“Ha! Why would I pay to get that piece of shit fixed?” She waved her screwdriver at the car. “If someone tries to steal it again, they’d be doing me a favor!”

“Ha ha. If it works for you, it works for you.”

“Heh ...”

The conversation died, and they smoked in silence, illuminated intermittently by the headlights of passing cars.

“So, what are you doing out here?” Michelle blurted out.

Alice tapped the poster. “The Prophet says I need to get better at recruiting.”

Michelle didn’t answer right away. Sauntered to the other leg of the minimart sign and leaned. Took another drag.

“You back to wearing boy clothes now?”

“Yeah.... The Prophet says it’ll help Dad get used to me. It’s only temporary.”

Michelle threw herself off the column. “Fuck, Alice! How is that different from what your dad wants you to do?”

“I hate it, but what can I say! If I contradict The Prophet, they’ll boot my ass right out of there.”

“Then stop going! DUH!”

“You haven’t been there! You haven’t seen what The Prophet can do! If I bring my dad in,” Alice hesitated, “he says I’ve got it.” 

“Got what?”

“He can do the change ... for free. And it’ll be real! No fake boobs with broad shoulders and five o’clock shadow. I’ll be perfect!”

“Fuck! Even if it’s not a con, and it is, who needs to be perfect? You don’t have broad shoulders and five o’clock shadow now!”

“I do! I want to be perfect!” 

“Is it perfect to hang out in dusty bumfuck ranch with everyone you went there to escape in the first place!?” 

Michelle didn’t understand. She didn’t believe. Of course, if Michelle thought it was all a con, what Alice was going through looked crazy! Alice didn’t like disagreeing with her, but Michelle just didn’t know what she was talking about.

“The-The Prophet says that if I bring Dad in, he’ll be able to change his mind. Come with me one of these days! I can show you. He’s always right.”

“Thanks for the cigarette.” 

Michelle stubbed hers out on the column and turned to leave.

Alice’s shoulders slumped, miserable. “See you in school, Michelle.” 

Michelle hesitated, but only for a moment. She ran back to crush Alice in a hug, tears in the corner of her eyes.

“See you in school, Ali.”

They snuffled as they released each other. Michelle got back into the hatchback, jammed the screwdriver into the steering column, and wrenched it. The car shuddered to life. Alice waved from beneath the sign. Michelle blew a kiss back and threw the car into a wide U. She puttered off down the highway until her car disappeared. 

Alice tossed her now dead cigarette into the tall grass. She was bending to pick up her poster and resume the task at hand when her phone dinged. Any distraction was a welcome one. She fished the brand-new iPhone from her back pocket. It had been her birthday last month, and the phone was her parents’ dumb idea of a peace offering or a bribe or something. Whatever it was supposed to be, the phone was pretty awesome.

The text was from a number marked Unknown.

Know what you look for.

Can help.

It was strange. Not just the words, the font wasn’t normal. The letters had all kinds of bizarre accents and strikethroughs and stray pixels. It looked like some kind of crazy computer language but fucked up. Glitchy. Was someone trying to hack her phone? Was Michelle messing with her because of their disagreement?

“Who is this?” Alice texted back.

I know Samyaza. Real Samyaza.

What the fuck!?! Alice had never told anyone The Prophet’s name. As instructed, she always referred to him as “The Prophet.” It couldn’t be Michelle. It couldn’t be a hacker! Who the hell was texting her?

Alice stared at the screen. It flickered and pixelated. Then it went dead.

She held down the power button, but it didn’t switch back on. The battery had been full a minute ago! She tapped the button again. Slapped the phone against her thigh. God damnit! On top of everything else, her new goddamn phone!

She raised the screen back to her eyes. The phone finally appeared to be rebooting. Alice breathed a sigh of relief. It was longer than a normal reboot, but afterward everything looked normal. The texts were still there. 

Curiosity overwhelmed her. What if this was some kind of test from The Prophet? She didn’t like what it was doing to her phone, but if it broke, she could always make her parents buy her a new one for Christmas.  

Are you still there!?

My phone is freaking out.

Not your phone. Interface difficult.

Technology not compatible.

Alice started to text “Do you mean like a Samsung or a—” but didn’t finish typing the sentence. “Fuck it,” she said out loud and hit the Dial button underneath the unknown number.

She lifted the phone to her ear. It rang once before the connection was established. On the other end she could hear a muffled cacophony of static and grinding sounds.

“Hello? If this is you, Michelle, you can go fuck yourself!”

Through the roar of static, a buzzing voice like a primitive speech synthesizer surged in and out.

“-s difficult ... I ... atching ... yoooooouuu.”

“What!? Hello? HELLO!?!”

The noise built in intensity until it became deafening. Alice tore the phone away from her ear just in time to see the screen crack like it had been hit by a baseball. Behind the shattered faceplate, the phone’s glow faded slowly to black.

“Fuck,” she panted. “Fuck.”

The phone wouldn’t reboot no matter what she did with the power button or how much she slapped it against her leg. Yeah, she’d catch hell if her parents found out, but that wasn’t what was giving her this sinking feeling of dread. The patch of grass underneath the strip mall sign and the lonely night-time highway next to it, so lame and toothless only moments ago now seemed to drip with menace. Alice looked around. No one there, just the shadows of bushes and tall grass. They rustled in the warm breeze, and Alice shuddered. 

She was supposed to have held the sign out there until midnight, but she couldn’t stay. She’d make up an excuse if anyone checked on her. Alice grabbed her poster and hurried back to safety of the well-lit storefronts.

*

Clicks and clacks like balls tumbling around a bingo cage ricocheted around Father Mike’s office as he typed furiously on his old desktop computer. This week’s homily was done, as well as next week’s, but he had to get these ideas out of his head while they were still fresh. Sunlight streamed in through the window. What a wonderful day.

The phone on his desk trilled. Father Mike triumphantly struck Save and turned his attention to the flashing orange button indicating line one.

“Bishop Thomas is here, Father.”

“Thank you, Rose. Tell him to come in.”

He clicked off. Stood and smoothed the front of his shirt. When Bishop Thomas blustered through the door a moment later, Father Mike greeted him with a hearty handshake.

“John! How are you?”

“I’m doing okay. Can I take a seat?”

“Sure, sure.” Father Mike led the Bishop to one of the chairs with his hand on his back. “What can I do for you?” he asked as he perched himself on the front of his desk.

Bishop Thomas took his time settling into the bucket seat then folded his arms across his chest.

“Hrm. How are you doing, Mike?”

“Me? I’m doing great.”

“You know, last time we talked, you seemed to be doing significantly less than great.”

“Ha ha. Do you blame me? You hit me with some pretty bad news. It took me a while to accept, but.” He shrugged. “I did.” 

“Of course, of course. Mike, I’ll cut to the point. We’ve been hearing some rumors about you. Specifically the things you’ve been promoting in your homilies.”

Stupid dinosaur, thought Father Mike. He comes in to complain when no one’s coming to mass because I’m delivering the same soulless gibberish on Sunday that every other priest in the country does. Now that I’m actually saying something of substance and drawing a crowd, he’s bothered I’ve gone too unorthodox. 

None of this played across Father Mike’s face. He maintained his placid smile as he responded. “There’s obviously been a change, but it’s more one of mood than anything I’m promoting. Same old revolutionary message of love and service we’ve always had. The parish has really been responding!”

Bishop Thomas could not suppress a passing scowl at the word revolutionary. If Mike noticed, he didn’t react. “Yes. I admit, your numbers are up. Somewhat.” He grumbled. “Back to your mood. What affected this improvement?”

“I just accepted God’s plan for me. You know how miserable we get when we try to put our own wants above those of the divine.”

“Enough games, Mike. What’s your connection to the Star Touched cult?”

Well, I’ll be damned, noted Father Mike. I didn’t think the old windbag had it in him to be that direct.

“It’s no secret, and they’re not a cult—the charity work they do has us beat, hands down! They’re rough around the edges, sure, but you should come and see their Home Compound sometime. You won’t believe the tremendous amount of good they’re able to achieve with so few resources.” 

“Good Lord! You’re not trying it with me now, are you?”

“Trying what exactly, your excellency?”

“Do you think it’s okay to recruit for a damned UFO cult right out of the church!?” Bishop Thomas’s face was becoming flushed and shiny.

“I told you, they’re not a cult. It’s got nothing to do with religion.”

“And you don’t care at all about how this looks for us?”

“Did Jesus care how things looked, Bishop?”

“Jesus wasn’t evangelizing free love!” Bishop Thomas struggled out of his chair to face his mutinous subordinate eye to eye. “For Christ’s sake, Mike, don’t you know the problems we’ve had with that stuff!?”

That again—and from the people who were responsible for it all in the first place. Father Mike looked down and away at the floor. His fists balled at his side. He pushed a ragged breath of air through his nostrils. Something snapped in his mind.

“No, you’ve had problems with priests fucking children and then covering it up.”

Bishop Thomas stumbled backward.

Father Mike continued. “You know, after all these years of shame and repression, I think I’m ready for a freer love myself.” 

The Bishop’s mouth hung agape. He hadn’t expected this conversation to be easy, but he also hadn’t expected a milquetoast like Mike Heany to throw the abuse scandal back in his face. What had those people done to him?

Bishop Thomas found his voice. “You took a vow of obedience!”

Father Mike strode past him and grabbed a file box from the shelves that lined the back wall. He circled back behind his desk, dumped out the few files inside the box, and began to fill it with odds and ends. “Funny thing about vows, John. They only mean something as long as you believe in them,” he said without looking up. 

“You know, the word faithless has two meanings.” 

“You might consider excommunicating me,” Father Mike quipped as he ripped open a desk drawer. Inside was his secret pint of whiskey. He sneered at the bottle, grabbed a packet of letters underneath, and slammed the drawer closed.

“Christ, you know we don’t do that anymore—the press is horrible!” The Bishop weighed his options as Mike emptied out his desk. They were scant. “Look, if you’re trying to hurt us for closing your church, just know that it wasn’t about you! It might even be negotiable.” 

Mike laughed and crammed the cardboard lid onto his box. “I hadn’t thought about that in weeks before you came in. I’ve just found something better than you can offer—to me or to humanity.” He hefted the box under his arm and marched past the Bishop and out of the office. His erstwhile superior lurched after him into the hallway.

“Mike, you’re right. I don’t have any power over you if you want to leave, but just listen to me as a friend, if that still matters to you. This whole thing is ridiculous! It’s a hippie UFO cult!”

The ex-priest turned. “Then, as a friend, I should thank you for helping me come to a decision.”  He nodded and smiled, talking more to himself than to the Bishop. “I can do a lot more good in a hippie UFO cult than I can in a place so concerned with appearances.” Mike readjusted the box under his arm and resumed his exit. “Godspeed, Bishop,” he jabbed over his shoulder.

The secretary had heard yelling coming from the office but didn’t dare interrupt. She rose from her desk as Mike crossed into the reception room and called after him. “Father? Father, what happened?”

He didn’t acknowledge her and didn’t break stride.  In fact, he didn’t stop until he reached the parking lot. Neither secretary nor Bishop followed him out.

*

Martin had made it through half of the book in one sitting. He just couldn’t put it down. So many of the stories and pieces of advice it contained applied directly to him! He did visualize the worst outcome of any situation. He did hope for changes in his life without taking action toward those changes. He did waste his limited time on this planet with minutiae that served only to distract.

The most striking chapter was the one on love. Martin had admitted to himself a long time ago that, on some level, he didn’t think he deserved love. It was the main subject he kept returning to with his therapist. The book explained that this was a universal problem. Martin’s concerns about his weight, his age, and his boring, ho-hum life, were all just convenient excuses that obfuscated the real issue. Human beings crave a love that is impossible in our current state of being.

Spiritually, before we’re born, we all come from the same place. It’s an ocean of consciousness parceled out into tiny droplets, each individually wrapped in its own plastic bubble. Those droplets yearn to be an ocean again! At the same time, we are terrified that the bubble, our ego, the source of all our misery, will dissolve. We see its dissolution as death.

This is a lie we tell out of fear. There have always been people who have broken free from the bubble during their terrestrial lifespans. Some call them buddhas, some call them saints. Friedrich Nietzsche called them the Übermensch. The wisdom and love of all thinking creatures flows through these special people like a river. Psychically selfless, their physical bodies are, in fact, healthier than those belonging to people who only have access to a small, stagnant droplet of consciousness. When these people die, it is a choice. They rejoin the ocean when they are ready, bringing with them everything they’ve learned.

It’s obvious that this state is achievable. Why else would the buddhas and saints who attained it spend the rest of their lives attempting to show others the way? 

Martin had always been resistant to mainstream religion. Who, other than Mike, could believe in an organization that told you the very core of your being was dirty, evil, and wrong? Martin had thrown the baby out with the bathwater. He had been so closed to truths like these, so earthbound! He had assumed all spirituality was all the same shameful hogwash that the mainstream churches peddled. 

He was so engrossed in the book he didn’t notice the first knock on his door. The second was so loud that it startled him. Martin threw his legs off the couch and laid the paperback on his coffee table. Who could it be? He wasn’t expecting anyone. With luck, it would just be the mailman or the meter reader or someone similar that he could dismiss quickly and get back to reading. Martin tried visualizing it as he padded to the door in his socks.

It was Mike. 

Mike had only been to Martin’s apartment a few times, and he had never come unannounced. Martin only managed to squeak out a confused hi before Mike swept into the room, grabbed him around the waist, and kissed him with an open mouth.

“Mike, what’s going on?” Martin sputtered as he pushed his friend a step backward with both hands. Mike didn’t seem bothered at all. He had a big grin on his face.

“I left the church. It’s been a long time coming.”

“Really? Good!” Martin was reeling, still trying to get his bearings. “Uh, what happened?”

“It doesn’t matter. It just suddenly became clear to me that it’s all bullshit.” He drew in once more, slower this time “It’s always been bullshit.”

Martin felt Mike’s fingers trace his dick and balls over the fabric of his pants.

Martin pushed him away again. This time, Mike was annoyed. “Isn’t this what you wanted?” he snapped.

“Yes! It’s just— It’s the middle of the day, and, hold on.” It was what Martin wanted—desperately, and for years, but it was so sudden! This visualization stuff was no joke!

 “Let’s have a drink,” he offered. “It’ll put me in the mood.”

“Sure,” Mike said, rubbing the back of his neck. Truth be told, he wasn’t particularly hot himself at the moment. It was disappointing that Martin wasn’t reacting the way he’d expected, but he was probably right. A drink was a good idea.

Mike plopped down on the couch and Martin hustled to the kitchen. He threw open cabinets and drawers with shaking hands. It must be excitement, he decided. Anticipation of his dreams finally come true.

“Goddamn it,” he muttered as he came up short. Martin wasn’t a big drinker, but he had been sure that there was something left over in the house. There was a half-empty bottle of wine he had bought last week, but that wasn’t what he was looking for. Finally, he opened the freezer, and there it was. An ancient, frost-coated bottle of vodka shoved in the back, behind the ice trays and frozen meatballs. 

Martin breathed a sigh of relief and laid out two small juice glasses. He poured them both half full of the chilly, viscous liquid and put the bottle on the counter. He paused there, fingernails tapping the bottle’s shoulder. Then he downed one of the glasses in a single gulp.

He coughed, unused to hard liquor taken straight, but it calmed him. He refilled the empty glass and carried both back to the living room. 

“Sorry about that. It’s just a big surprise, is all,” he said as he handed the glass he hadn’t drank out of to Mike. 

Mike was looking more comfortable, too. “No problem,” he said as he accepted the glass. He sniffed at the clear liquid. “Vodka?” he queried. 

“Yeah, I know you like whiskey, but I don’t drink by myself often so—”

“No, no. Vodka’s great,” Mike cut him off. “What should we drink to?”

Martin held his glass with both hands and sat down on the couch, close to Mike.

“Hmmm. To the Star Touched, I guess? Am I right that they’re the ones to thank for this change in you?”

Mike draped his arm around Martin’s shoulder and Martin snuggled closer. “Ha ha! Nothing gets by you, does it?” Mike said. He raised his glass. “To the Star Touched!”

They both drank. Mike sipped. Martin didn’t fully drain glass number two, but another draught like that and he would have. He shook his head and made a sour face.

“It’s amazing! I've been reading the book!” Martin pointed at the paperback on the coffee table in front of them.

Mike frowned. “Oh, that.” He sucked wind through his teeth. “Don’t you think it’s a little poorly written?” 

“What are you talking about? It moved me!”

“But it’s all so hokey! Just BS self-help stuff that has nothing to do with helping other people or saying anything of substance about what we really believe! I mean, maybe I can help rewrite it, Samyaza’s not the best—” He stopped. Tears were welling up in Martin’s eyes. “Martin, what’s wrong!?”

Martin put his half-finished drink on the table. Mucousy emotion caught in his throat and thickened his voice. “Nothing, it’s just—what do you want me to believe?” He grabbed a tissue from a box on the coffee table. “I finally think I understand you, and now you say that it’s all bullshit again?”

He seemed close to bursting into a full-on crying jag. Mike hugged him close and tried to calm him down. “Shhh, Martin, I’m sorry. I was just criticizing the writing style. I-I didn’t think it matched what I had seen in person at Home Ranch. Obviously, I was wrong if it affected you like this.”

Mike was bewildered. Martin had always been sensitive, but never about stuff like this! You could upset him more by insulting his favorite actor than by saying everything he ever believed in was a lie. 

Martin sniffled and wiped his eyes on his tissue. “No, it’s okay, it’s just been an emotional day.”

Mike kissed him on the forehead. “Then don’t you think it’s about time it was over?” he said as he dipped his head toward the bedroom door.

Martin sniffed, pulled his lips into an affirmative grin and nodded.

They left their drinks unfinished and walked to the bedroom, arm and arm.

*

It was 4 a.m. Mike was still awake. It had been too early to go to bed, well too early to really go to bed, so they had watched a couple movies in Martin’s room after they had finished. It was nice. They had ordered takeout for dinner and eaten it in front of the TV. 

At 10 p.m. they decided it was late enough to sleep. Sundown or not, it still had been too early for Mike. Maybe it was that they had spent the whole day in bed and he wasn’t tired. If that were true, shouldn’t he have drifted off once it hit a more reasonable bedtime? The thought of leaving crossed his mind many times, but he wouldn’t give in to it. He had done that to Martin enough over their relationship. 

Instead he lay awake, spooning Martin from behind and stealing little glances behind him at the digital clock on the nightstand. With his face to the back of Martin’s head, he never noticed that Martin’s eyes would snap open at irregular intervals. 

Martin didn’t move any part of himself other than his eyes. For some reason he couldn’t define, he didn’t want Mike to know he was awake. He’d spend a minute glancing around his small, darkened bedroom without tiring, before closing his eyes once more in a futile attempt to force himself to sleep.